“Always check,” Renwell liked to remind me in our training sessions. “Why lose essential moments over someone’s carelessness?”
I clenched my gloved fingers over the knob and twisted it easily. I frowned and slipped inside, silently closing the door behind me.
Soft light from the street filtered through the large window. Shelves of books lined the study walls, and a heavy desk took uphalf the room. The same desk I’d watched the High Councilor hunch over every night from a rooftop perch I’d found across the street.
A small table by the still-warm fireplace held a magnificent set of Death and Four tiles. The weak light made the gold inlay shimmer in a way that made my fingers itch to snatch them up.
But I couldn’t stray from my purpose.
“Garyth is hiding something,” Renwell had told me. “Search his correspondence, his ledgers, any document that seems odd. Find proof.”
But the High Councilor’s desk was clear of everything but an inkpot, a quill, and a stack of blank writing paper. My gaze raced over the spines of the books on his shelves, and I pulled out random ones, looking for a secret compartment. Nothing.
A door closed somewhere in the house, and I froze, a bead of sweat slipping down my spine.
The girl—Isabel—was probably still here somewhere. Perhaps with a maid.
Too many people. Too little time. Too dangerous. But I couldn’t fail the first real mission Renwell had given me after two years of training.
Garythmustbe hiding something. As the High Enforcer, Renwell was rarely wrong when it came to matters of intelligence. He’d protected my father’s reign for decades. And one day, I would do the same for my brother.
IfI could prove myself.
I strode to the window and checked its seams. My heart leapt when I discovered I could easily pop it open. A narrow ledge ran under the window and around the house.
An escape, if I needed it.
I took another turn around the study, fiddling with the table, the fireplace, even the large violet rug.
The blood in my veins pulsed hard and hot. Where in the deep, dark, wandering hell would a High Councilor hide sensitive documents?
My focus narrowed on the heavy wooden desk, the pride and joy of the room from the way the precious Twaryn wood shone, every delicate carving free of dust. It had no drawers, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t hide anything.
I carefully shifted Garyth’s leather armchair away and knelt in front of the desk. Renwell had told me once that desks and tables with secret compartments were very popular in years past. He’d even shown me how to work the one in my father’s study—without my father’s knowledge, of course.
Dancing my fingers along the ridges and seams of the wood panels, I searched for a keyhole and found none. But—there. My forefinger snagged on an uneven piece of wood under the top of the desk. I pressed it and a panel near the foot of the desk popped open.
I grinned in triumph.
A space barely the span of my hand held a stack of papers. I gently tugged them out and held them closer to the window to read.
My heart sank. Gibberish. Pages and pages of strange symbols, letters, and numbers. A code. But why? What was he hiding?
And more importantly, was it dangerous?
My mother’s deathly pale face and bloodied chest shimmered in my mind.
The papers shook in my hands, but I kept flipping through them until I reached the last one. In the top right corner of the yellowed page, someone had inked a symbol.
“No,” I breathed.
But there was no mistaking the joined hands beneath Rellmira’s half sun. The symbol of the People’s Council.
Something creaked in the hallway. I ducked behind the desk. I hadn’t locked the door behind me in case that was unusual for Garyth. Which made him a forgetful fool... or a trusting one. But a fool nonetheless, with treasonous documents in his possession.
I held my breath. One heartbeat. Two. Three. I counted to ten and slowly exhaled.
Time to go.
